Dedicated to encouraging people to cook simple foods with real ingredients, and any other fun topics.

Tag Archives: cheese

I miss pasta. I really, really, really do. Really, really good mac and cheese that is homemade is so luscious, rich, thick and, well, sinful.

Does this recipe replicate it? Eh. It’s rich and it’s creamy. But is cauliflower ever going to be confused with quality pasta? No. On the other hand, there’s no bloat from carb overloading and no out of control blood sugar responses. All things considered, this is an amazing vegetable side dish!! You’ve got a ton of cauliflower in a form that people will eat. Two pounds of frozen cauliflower barely escapes a dinner with four diners. Crazy for cauliflower. Honestly, we love this dish. I make this all the time. It’s quick, the ingredients are available year ’round, and even the kids eat it!

Also, it uses up some random items that I always have laying around: shredded cheese and sour cream. Taco night never seems to use all these items up.

Some caveats about this recipe. I make real mac and cheese and feel that this recipe should be no different. Take your low fat cheese, your Greek yogurt, your low fat yogurt, chicken stock and whatever other “lighteners” you have and don’t put them in here. You have already subbed out the pasta. Live a little and splurge. Seriously.

Also, keep in mind that the sauce is covering two pounds of cauliflower. Cauliflower is very, very wet. Especially when baked. It’s the opposite of pasta, instead of absorbing sauce, the cauliflower will be adding water to the sauce. So, this sauce will be very thick and rather over spiced. If you were to try a bit of the sauce, you would immediately think: too much salt, the woman is crazy. Oh, wait, the cayenne just hit!! Now it’s too spicy. And too thick. Don’t think those things until you’ve baked the whole concoction. If you cut back on the spices, your dish will be incredibly bland. If you waiver on the sauce and think it needs to be a touch thinner, it will won’t be thick and creamy at finish. It’s a delicate balance that will only reveal its perfection at the very end.

Place the cauliflower and water in a saucepan and cook the cauliflower until it’s not frozen anymore. You don’t want the cauliflower to be too soft because it is being cooked again in the oven. Thoroughly drain the water out of the pan.

In a small sauce pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and stir for about 1-2 minutes. Add the milk and stir until really thick. Add the salt, cayenne, and mustard powder. Stir until well incorporated, and remove from heat. Add the sour cream and stir well. Add the cheese and stir until melted through.

I suppose at this point, I should tell you to pour the sauce over the cauliflower and stir well. It’s bad enough to clean the sauce out of the small pan, why make more work and have to clean it out of the cauliflower pan too? So, I put the cauliflower in the greased baking dish and pour the sauce over the cauliflower there. I then stir the mixture together until well blended and add cheese for the topping.

Cook until bubbling and the cheese is melted and just starting to brown.

The low carb craze has made superstars out of some vegetables that at best were used to torture children in a previous life. Kale. Seriously. Kale. The only way kale is good is when it is cooked for a very long time in a ham hock gravy or in Kale and Andouille Soup. There, I said it. Kale becomes tolerable when cooked within an inch of its life and paired with a smoked pork product.

The next vegetable up for abuse is the poor man’s broccoli, cauliflower. Cauliflower is tolerable when you add a signficant amount of dairy products to the mix. I’ve made cauliflower puree, which can double as a quasi mashed potato substitute. Cheesy cauliflower patties are now starting to trend, which would be the logical progression. When I was a kid, my mom would make potato pancakes out of left over mashed potatoes. After fending off dinosaur attacks, of course. So, why not try to make fried patties out of cauliflower? Well, cauliflower has no starch. It also contains a lot of water. You need a lot of help to make these suckers stick together. This “help” likely defeats the purpose of choosing cauliflower, because it either adds carbs or gluten. On the plus side, it’s probably far more healthy than what you were going to eat, even with the add-ins.

I saw purple cauliflower in the store and thought that maybe such a cool color would inspire the kids to give the dish a try. My daughter did try it and didn’t really like it. Son and husband really liked it, as long as I didn’t try to say it was something that it wasn’t. In other words, these were very good cheesy cauliflower patties.

As you can see above, I subbed the patties out for English muffins in Eggs Benedict. These were really good. A savory, cheesy bottom that you didn’t have to fight with, complimented the poached egg and Canadian bacon really well. As a bonus, no need for asparagus, there was already plenty of veg on the plate!

The other time I used it, it was a vegetable for dinner.

The patty served as a very nice compliment for my steak dish! I liked it and would make it again. Definitely a different take and something to shake up the veggie routine in our house. As a bonus, very easy to make!

Place all ingredients, except the butter, into food processor. Pulse until the cauliflower is coarsely ground. Remove mixture from processor and form into patties. The smaller and thinner the patties, the more likely they are to maintain their shape.

In a heavy bottomed skillet, over medium heat, melt the butter. When the butter just starts to foam, add the patties, careful not to crowd. When the patties are browned, carefully flip and cook until the other side is browned as well. About 3 minutes each side. Serve as desired.

Note: I roasted the florets at 375 degrees fahrenheit in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper for about 25 minutes, turning once.

Like this:

In eating low carb, breakfast can be a bit of a challenge. Besides eggs and your typical breakfast meats (bacon, sausage, scrapple, etc.), most of breakfast is a bit of a carbfest. Pancakes, Waffles, croissants, muffins, pastries, doughnuts. Oh my!!

So, when you are stuck with eggs every day and rotating the breakfast meats and adding berries, eventually you come to a point where enough is enough. Enter the frittata. The frittata is supposed to be a fried egg, which part of this recipe is. With the advent of broiling ovens, the cooking style for this dish has changed from completely fried, to a hybrid of fried and broiled. While this may not be as authentic as a true frittata, it does make the dish easier to make without compromising its integrity.

Frittata has its origins in Italian cuisine and was considered a great way to use up leftovers, especially vegetables. In the United States, it appears more as a brunch dish and the ingredients used vary wildly from only vegetables to a meat extravaganza.

In my house, we have used leftover taco meat and cheese to create a Mexican inspired frittata. For this recipe, we use gumbo-inspired ingredients, onions, peppers, andouille sausage and garlic. You can use anything you have on hand, really.

The general plan of a frittata starts with a well oiled, oven safe sauté or fry pan that can handle the bulk of the ingredients. You need a pan that can contain not only the eggs, but everything you want the eggs to contain. I use my All-Clad d5 12 inch fry pan. I buy All-Clad because they are still made here in America (except the lids) and are made with Stainless Steel. I bought the cookware on sale (it was a open box set) at Williams Sonoma and have never looked back. I can assure you, no business has given me any products to try or endorse. I bought it and love it. There’s no warping, it’s not thin in spots and it looks beautiful. Plus, it’s made in Pennsylvania. I am more than happy to support products from countries that oversee (to some extent) the manufacturing process and require a decent wage to be paid to its workers. Not all of the All-Clad line is made in the USA, so you have to look (like if you see a certain BAM! chef on the box, just walk away). There’s a reason it’s cheaper.

Anyway, I mention this because not all cookware is meant to be put in the oven under the broiler. Usually the darker and non-stick pans advise against it.

So you have a well oiled pan, heat the oil and make sure it coats the entire interior of the pan. Add your additions to the frittata and sauté until you achieve the texture you want in the additions (peppers and onions soft, for example). Add beaten eggs to the pan. Cook on the stove top until the bottom and sides are set and the top is less runny. At this point, the pan should be placed in the pre-heated oven set on high broil. You need to keep an eye on it. Broil the frittata until puffed in the center and there’s no jiggle when the pan is moved.

In a nutshell, that’s a frittata. It’s not hard, it’s all in one pan and easy to clean up. It’s also an excellent way to repurpose leftovers into a sum greater than the parts.

In this frittata, my son wanted to try out his knife skills. So, we have a very rustic version of the dish. You can take the time to fine dice everything for a more refined appearance. Frittatas are a nice way to stem the madness you may experience at breakfast if you are following a lower carb way of living. In my house, they are also a very quick weekday meal using leftovers in a brand new and not so humdrum way.

Place oil in 12 inch fry pan over medium heat, swirl to coat the entire pan. When oil is heated, add onions and peppers, season with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper, and cook until soft. Add the garlic and sauté further until fragrant. Add sausages and sauté until warmed through.

Preheat broiler set on high.

Add to the beaten eggs the remaining salt and pepper. Stir in the cheese, until combined.

Distribute the pan ingredients evenly throughout the pan with a wooden spoon. Add the egg and cheese mixture. Cook on the stovetop over until the sides and bottom are set and the eggs are runny on top. This step is hard to describe, but you want a layer of runny egg mixture, but it shouldn’t be very deep. At this point, you want to place the pan in the oven under the broiler. Leaving the door slightly ajar, broil until the egg is puffed in the center and the mixture does not jiggle when you shake the pan.

Remove from oven, cut in wedges and serve.

Note of caution: when removing the pan from the oven, keep in mind the ENTIRE pan was in the oven. So, a few seconds later you will see the pan on the stove and may not think too much about it if you have to hold it to cut the frittata to serve. As the handle is now extremely hot, you will get burned. I avoid this by draping a hot pad or oven mitt over the handle to remind myself that while my handles aren’t normally hot, in this case it is scorching.